Come She Will
by PlainSimpleGarak
Summary: Four teenagers fall into the sewers and meet a tragic end. Twenty years later they have risen from the dead and come looking to cause trouble with the turtles that disturbed them. A black comedy slant to the usual ‘girls fall in sewers’ plot.
1. April

_Author's notes: This piece is the result of an, admittedly, harebrained plotbunny (pun intended). After reading a long series of the ever-present "girls fall into sewers, meet the TMNT, fall in love, stupidity ensues" type of fiction, I started to wonder if I could somehow grab on to that concept and turn it into something I would want to write._

_This is the result._

_The TMNT world in this story is a mix between the 1987 cartoonverse and the 1990 movieverse. Some aspects of the 1987 cartoon were necessary: the campy humor, the somewhat greater connection to humanity, and the more unified turtle team. The dialogue is written with the 1987 cartoon particularly in mind (albeit a more mature version of the toon). But the theme and mood of the story fit more closely with the 1990 movie: a place where you can drop bad puns in the direst situations and then have the scene change a second later to something rather serious. All that being said, the TMNT are set in the present day._

_Once again, I started this fanfiction in 2008. In 2011, I tried to come back to it and finish it, but I found that I had gaping plotholes in my original plan. I sat down and thought long and hard about what I wanted to write and it struck me that I wasn't writing a parody… I was writing a humorous ghost story, and the only way I could push it to completion was to gut it and carve out the good bits and start anew._

_Thanks go out to Nekotsuki and the wonderful folks at Stealthy Stories for help in wrangling this bunny!  
_

_Disclaimers: the verses that frame each chapter are from the Simon and Garfunkel song "April, Come She Will" I make no claim to the song, nor the TMNT franchise._

_I did, however have way too much fun writing this._

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**Come She Will**

_A darkly humorous look at Ninja Turtles and the girls who follow them_

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_"April, come she will…"_

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Lexington Avenue Line, New York City subway: February 14th, 1928

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"Kyoko… Kyoko!" The sound of the shout was drowned out by the screech of the train as it started to roll down the dark underground tunnel, prompting the owner of the voice to throw his hands up in despair. The dark haired youth huffed for breath while skidding down the last few steps and into the platform area. Dim, flickering lights cast a sickly orange glow over the grimy tiled expanse. He could hear the crack of his heels as they hit the floor with each step, like miniature gunshots. As the headlights of the train died away there was a deafening inrush of silence and bitter, stale air.

He pushed a clump of hair from his face and stared into the darkness. In the empty station his voice sounded small and hopelessly alone. "Kyoko? Are you here?"

There were several seconds of lingering silence before he got the response he had so dearly hoped for. Or at least the voice he wanted to hear. "Go home, Haruo."

His eyes creased at the edges, turning towards the shadows at the back of the dock. "Not without you, Kyoko." His expression looked like it was hung up in the indecision between worry and anger.

Brown eyes peered out from the bleak shadows, and the voice that accompanied them was stiff and determined. "I said go home. There is nothing here you can do, and mother will be worried about you."

Haruo swallowed, his mouth feeling dry. He could hear a thin, tight tone of venom in his sister's voice, and it cut through his brave demeanor. "Mother is equally worried about you. She has been ever since Uncle set you up with that man." The last two words dripped with acid, as if he was describing a monster.

"If she was smart, she would have worried more before I left." Kyoko stepped out into the flickering lights, fixing her brother with an even stare. Her face still had the same pudgy-cheeked innocence Haruo remembered, but her eyes were cold and empty.

"She did, but what could we do?" the young man protested. "Uncle was…" He trailed off, looking for the right word.

"Determined." His younger sister filled in for him.

"Yes, determined." He paused, blinking at her before lowering his eyes to the floor, kicking at the tiles with his toe. "If Father could have been here, things could have been different." He kept his tone low, as if he was muttering to himself more than actually speaking to her. He almost hoped she didn't hear him, but when he lifted his eyes, he found them caught in her relentless gaze.

Kyoko's voice was soft and even. Despite the breathy tone, it held an undercurrent of determination. "You're wrong. Father's presence would not have changed a thing; he was as powerless as I am." She paused and her next words cut through the air like a knife. "As I was."

'_Was?'_ The breath caught in her brother's throat. "Then why didn't you tell us you had come back to New York?" He creased his brows, listening as the next train gave a blast of its horn in the distance. In the dim echoes of the subway it lent an eerie ring to the station.

As the sound cleared, Haruo became aware of a new tone; a low, bitter pain emanating from a woman who he thought he knew. "You don't understand, Haruo." She paused just long enough to let that sink in. "I never had the choice to come back."

"What?" Haruo creased his brows, flinging his hands to the side. Confusion poured into his eyes, and it only deepened as he watched his sister draw aside her coat. There was a dark shadow staining her simple cotton dress, and if she had not just been standing there, speaking to him, he would have sworn it was blood.

The young man shook his head and rushed forward to grab her arm. "What has happened? If he has hurt you…" His brown eyes lifted to hers, going from righteous anger to widened shock as her slight hand grabbed him and flung him backwards with a vicious strength he never knew his sister to posses.

"Do not follow me." Her voice softened a touch, hints of concern bled in. "But one day, when I have done all I can to set things right, please let me sleep…" as she spoke she slowly walked towards the edge of the platform.

"I don't understand, Kyoko..." her brother slowly picked himself up from the sticky tiles. "I just don't understand." He blinked back the wave of heat building up behind his eyes. As he stood, his only wish was to hear her laughter again. Not the bitter sound she had made before, but the bell-like giggle he had come to cherish.

For a few seconds she stared at him, the horn of the train sounding louder. It seemed to rattle her a little and she blinked once, almost as if she were coming out of a trance. When she spoke there was a hint of the tone Haruo remembered, light and soft. "You don't have to understand, Haruo. You just have to trust me."

"Trust you in what?" His eyes were searching frantically for some clue about what was going on.

"Trust me that I will protect you." she replied, watching him with her dark eyes. "Trust me, and remember me…" She paused for a second, holding out a hand. Haruo rushed forward desperate to reach her, pulling as his fingers closed around her delicate hand.

"I'm your brother. I'm your family, I will protect you…" He reached up to stroke her hair, blinking a little as she stopped him.

She stretched up on her tiptoes and planted the lightest kiss on his cheek, her lips as cold as ice. For a second, fondness flowed through her eyes and she sniffled slightly. "Not this time."

"What do you mean?" He barely got the words out before he realized that she had slipped through his grip. Clenching his fists, he started forward, his brain sluggishly trying to match the surge of adrenaline that propelled his body forward. The screeching roar of the train horn filled the station as the lights blazed forward. He was at a dead sprint, stretching so hard that his shoulder ached. His fingertips brushed hers before he felt them pull away a second time.

Time seemed to crawl by, agonizingly slowly. Unable to pull back and desperate to stop moving forward, Haruo found himself suspended horizontally in the air above the dock. His eyes were glued forward as Kyoko's thin form leapt off the platform. She, too, seemed to hang in midair momentarily, her skirt billowing out behind her like wings. She turned her brown eyes to Haruo and mouthed one word.

_Goodbye._

The sickening impact of the train with the body was mercifully drowned out from Haruo's ears by the impact of his chest on the frozen floor tiles. He rolled, his vision going white, the cacophony of the train filling his ears. He lay on his back, feeling the cold seep up from the ground, into the tiles, though his coat and into his flesh. He waited until the silence once again ran into the platform before he dared to move.

His chest hurt. His ribs hurt. His lungs hurt. None of that was important. The sound that ripped from his breast was distraught. Blood was flecked in his spittle and it hung in front of his face like a fanfare to the shattered words. "Kyoko?" He paused, and the silence was complete. "Kyoko!"

He couldn't bring himself to look. The police found him three hours later, curled in a ball in the corner of the station, sobbing.

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Sewers: New York City, September 8th, 2007

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"You do know that it's not going to work?" Raphael's voice had a sing-song tone to it as he threw a leg over the couch and rolled down the back to land on the cushions.

Leonardo chose to ignore the taunt and bit his tongue in concentration. Prodding at a small hose with a mini screwdriver, the coffeepot gave a grumpy gurgle. "I think it's just a little bit of sludge, and if I can just get it cleaned out… gyahh!" The blue clad brother winced as the hose popped free, spraying thick brown sludge that smelled heavily of coffee and mold into his face. He dropped both the coffeepot and the screwdriver in favor of rubbing his eyes.

Raphael sat up from his lounge, a grin playing across his features. "I told you."

Leonardo gave a short huff, standing up and walking for the sink in the kitchen. "Yeah, I suppose you did. I guess I'm going to have to get Donatello to look at it."

"He already did." Raph's voice was light, almost nonchalant. Leo looked over to his brother, still dabbing at his face with the washrag.

"He did?" He paused, wringing rotten coffee grounds from the cloth. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, you looked like you were having so much fun trying to repair it..." The red clad brother trailed off into a sarcastic grin, prompting Leonardo to shake his head.

"Thanks, Raph," he replied, dryly, before bringing the washcloth over to the living room. Kneeling, the eldest started to scrub grounds out from the carpet. "And what did Donatello have to say about it?"

"After he rolled his eyes at us for breaking it, he said that he thinks it just wore out." Raphael propped himself up on one elbow, picking up the coffeepot so Leo could clean underneath.

"Just wore out?" Leonardo looked up mid-scrub to give his younger brother a patient, mildly reproachful look.

"Yeah, you know… wore out?" If Raphael noticed the slight accusation, he chose to ignore it. "As in conked off, gave up the ghost, crapped out, broke down and shit the bed."

"Raphael, watch your language!" Master Splinter's voice was light but unmistakable coming from the next room. Raphael jerked his head around, suddenly wondering if the old rat had a radio antenna attached to the tips of his ears.

The red clad brother frowned slightly, trying to cover his embarrassment with an angry gaze. Behind him Michelangelo ventured out of the training room, drawn in by all the commotion.

"Things just don't break down," Leonardo protested.

"They do when they are picked up from the junkyard, dude," Mike replied, grinning. On the couch, Raphael was inwardly thankful for his younger brother's timing. It drew the attention away from him for a while.

Leo picked up the partially dismantled pot and poked at it again. "I still think I can fix it." Leaning back, he pulled a wrench from the open tool kit and tried working one of the machine bolts loose from the plastic carapace.

The youngest scooted over, settling down on the hassock and rolling it towards Leo so he could look over his brother's shoulder. Leonardo, for his part, took to ignoring his brother, sticking his tongue out in concentration. It was the expression that made Mikey start to giggle.

Turning petulantly, the eldest terrapin watched Mike with curiosity before finally asking, "What is so funny?"

"The look on your face, dude! It's so like, 'we canna push her any faster captain! The warp percolator is gonna explode!'" the orange clad brother grinned, adopting his best fake-Scottish accent.

Over on the couch Raphael clamped a hand to his mouth, desperately trying not to laugh as Leo frowned. "This happens to be delicate work, Michelangelo," the eldest chided lightly. "You could help by bringing me over some light." He was hoping it would give him some room to breathe.

Mikey stood, stretching and heading over to the lamp to turn it on and drag it forward when he heard a solid 'thump' of something hitting the floor. When he turned, his eyes widened and his face erupted into a grin. Leonardo was left holding in one hand a pair of pliers with the unscrewed bolt between its jaws; and the shell of the coffeepot in the other. Lying on the floor was the main heating element.

Leo looked from the faces of his brothers, each wearing a veil of thinly concealed laughter, to the ground where half of the guts of the coffeepot lay, to the coffeepot itself, and back to his brothers, offering up the only word that struck his lip. "Oops?"

The wide-eyed innocence of his brother's expression pushed Michelangelo into a fit of giggles. He knelt beside the fallen chunk of pot, picking it up. Leonardo was still staring at the piece, flabbergasted that it would have broken off and fallen out in the first place.

Mikey closed one eye, using his open one to inspect the broken chunks of plastic and burned out metal before looking straight into Leo's eyes. "I think it's dead, Jim."

At that comment, Raphael stopped trying to hide his laughter and rolled back on the couch, his sides shaking. Leonardo looked floorwards, his cheeks burning. "Well…" he started simply. "I thought I could fix it."

Raphael wiped tears from his eyes and rolled off the couch to sit near Leonardo, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Bro, I'll be the first to say that you're a good ninja and a fine leader, but a technical genius you ain't."

Donatello had poked his head out from his room, watching the entire situation with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. "I thought I had already told Raphael that it couldn't be fixed…" his voice had a soft scolding tone mixed with genuine warmth.

"You did," Raph countered. "It's just that our fearless leader decided that he had the magic touch."

Leonardo indulged in a small sigh while Donatello looked him over with a small, sympathetic smirk. "There was always the hope that if we fixed it we wouldn't have to go out and find another one," the blue clad brother affirmed.

Raphael got up from his crouch and stretched. "Scavenging isn't so bad. I, for one, could go with a night long walk around the town."

"Scavenging isn't a walk on the town, dude, it's a walk in the junkyard." Mikey's face was taunting and excited all at the same time.

"Out of the house is out of the house." The red-clad terrapin reasoned, heading over to the closet to grab out a coat and a red knit hat.

"I just don't think we should go out tonight, guys," Leonardo protested, hanging back cautiously as Michelangelo donned his coat.

"Why?" Raphael was halfway out the door as he asked the question. His brows knit under his mask and he turned to the doorway where Master Splinter was watching this all with curiosity. "Master Splinter, is there any reason we can't go out tonight?"

The elder rat rocked on his heels a bit, pondering that question. "I would imagine that the bad weather we have had lately would keep most people at home. As long as you are careful, you may leave."

Raph smiled with an edge of victory and Leo slowly picked himself to his feet. "All right, guys, let's go." He rallied them up, figuring that if he had to go, he would at least take point. He slipped into the coat and pulled the blue knit hat over his head, before heading out the door. Lingering at the threshold, he could feel a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if some internal warning system was ringing. His breath hung in a fog just past his beak, which made him furrow his brow in distress. "It's unseasonably cold out here," he murmured to himself, running to catch up with his brothers.

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Manhattan: New York City: April 23rd, 1985

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"Get your butt in gear." Joanna Worthing rolled her eyes and tapped her foot impatiently as her little sister dawdled by a shop front. "You don't have any money, so why even look?"

The shorter girl turned and rolled her eyes. "I'm not shopping, I'm checking my lipstick." She had a light, exasperated tone that seemed to say 'get with the program, sis.'

The elder of the two gave a small huff and caught the teenager by the arm. "You're beautiful, Steph. Simply gorgeous. Come on."

"I'm not done!" the younger whined, touching her fingers gingerly to her light brown bangs which had been meticulously fluffed for maximum volume.

"Then stay. You can walk into the train station looking stunning five minutes after the train has left." Joanna let go of her sister's arm and turned, walking away.

Stephanie paused a few more seconds before she realized her escort meant business. She turned, waving her hands at the disappearing back. "Jo! Jo? Wait up!"

The elder slowed just enough to make catching up easy on her little sister, running a hand through her short cropped curls as she walked. As they fell into pace with one another she sighed a little. She wished she hadn't given in to Steph's pleading, but there would be no concert without an escort, so 'older sister duties' were invoked. She gave another soft sigh before turning towards her sister. "So, who are we meeting at the station?"

"Oh, just Sara-Kay, and Ashlee and Radiata." The younger girl replied, stuffing her hands in her back pocket.

Jo nodded slightly at that, running the names through her memory. "Ok… wait. Radi-who-a?"

The younger girl huffed a little. "Radiata."

I didn't know you knew anyone by that name," Jo remarked evenly, knitting her brows.

"It's Rebecca's new nickname, duh." Steph rolled her eyes lightly, shaking her head.

"Why did she choose a name like that?"

A long, put upon sigh escaped the mouth of the younger girl. "Because she says that Rebecca is a boring name. Everybody has it, and she thinks that Becky sounds geeky. Radiata is much cooler."

Jo shook her head, her eyes drifting over to a newspaper stand. The front-page pictures showed the wreckage of a large airliner, Air India 182. The headlines read that no survivors were found. She felt her skin pull tightly against her cheeks and looked back towards Steph. The girl was humming the latest Michael Jackson tune, oblivious to it all. "I guess," was the only response she had for the names discussion.

When the two sisters arrived at the station, they found their three companions easily. Sarah-Kay and Rebecca (the girl refused to answer to the name when Jo greeted her with it, leaving the elder sister sighing as Step ran forward screaming 'Radi!') were having a heated argument about whether or not the Lexington line was haunted. The former had her hair dyed a remarkably false color of red, ripped jeans and a sweatshirt laboriously decorated with her mother's safety pins. The latter had long dark hair, brushed to a shine and a consistently bored expression.

Ashlee stood slightly in back, chewing an enormous wad of gum. She was a fair haired, sweet-faced child, with big doe eyes. The combination of the wide-eyed expression and the ever-present wad of gum always made Jo think of a cow chewing its cud. Still, when Stephanie ran up, all three girls broke out with bright smiling faces and greetings. They had a tendency to ignore Jo until she reminded them that she was, in fact, the woman with the tickets.

The small group boarded the train, the four younger girls hanging in back. They all stayed silent for several long minutes as crowds of people filed on and off the train. Sarah-Kay shoved her hands in her pockets and glared at their chaperone. She gave Stephanie a sideways glance. "Can't we ditch the escort?" she muttered.

Stephanie Worthing only shrugged, chewing her lip. Her general inclination was to agree, but she didn't want to push her luck so soon. "There'll be lotsa people at the concert. Let's do it there."

The other teen picked idly at the frayed edges of her sweatshirt. "It's embarrassing being seen with her."

Ashlee stopped chewing only long enough to breathe and speak. "Coulda been worse. It coulda been my Mom."

"Your Mom's a hose-bag," Radiata muttered, brushing a long thin chunk of hair back from her face. In the fading lights of the train she looked gothic and fragile, a faux finish created by enough makeup to make KISS blush.

Ashlee rolled her eyes, snapping her gum in irritation as Sarah-Kay pushed past. "Duh, that's what she just said. It would be worse."

The thin Goth curled her lip at her punk friend. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"I wonder sometimes." Sarah-Kay put her hands on her hips and walked towards the door to the cab. "Come on, the train's almost here. Time to get off."

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Junkyard: New York City, September 8th, 2007

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Michelangelo stood shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his hands stuffed underneath his armpits. A few feet away Raphael chuckled to himself, thinking that his brother looked very much like an odd, green version of a Cossack dancer. The younger turtle watched as Leonardo gently sifted through yet another pile of refuse. "Man, when did it get so cold outside?"

"Um… maybe since it became… fall? Don't know, but that's just a guess." Raph replied with a perfect deadpan. Sifting though a bin of random items, he pulled out a small appliance. "Hey look… a toaster!" He gave a sarcastic grin and tossed it over to Michelangelo.

Leo sighed. He wanted to rub his temples, but decided that he should wait until after he had the chance to wash his hands. "That's how many toasters total?"

The terrapin in the dashing orange hat dipped into the bag, rummaging as he counted. "Uh, seven, dude."

"Must have been a mass toaster changeover that we missed out on." Raph remarked, shrugging and going back to the search.

The eldest brother shook his head a little. "Seven toasters and no coffeepot. How fortunate."

"No coffeepot, and no anything else Donnie has on this list." Michelangelo groused lightly. "Do we have to carry all these toasters back?" He lightly hoped that with them leaving the brainiac behind he might get to dump at least a few of them off, but Leo's expression was firm.

"No, Mike. We need the heating elements in the toasters, and the wiring is useful." The blue clad brother sounded stern, almost academic as he went back to searching vainly for their desired appliance.

Behind him Raphael put a gloved hand to his mouth and spoke in an exaggerated stage whisper. "Actually Leo has this toaster fetish, and he plans on making all the toasters do an impressionistic grilled-bread version of "Swan Lake" in the kitchen." He grinned widely as his younger brother's eyes widened in an expression of '…really?' before both turtles doubled over with a wave of chuckles.

It was times like this that Leo wished that Donatello joined them on scavenging missions. But since their brother spent a good deal of his free time fixing and repairing all the household items, they had long since decided to cut him some slack and dismiss him from foraging missions unless he really needed to pick out a special part.

Instead the elder turtle slowly tuned out his brothers' joking. Something still unsettled him, and Mikey's awareness of the cold had brought it to the forefront of his mind again. For most of the walk Leo had thought it was just himself, perhaps he was coming down with a cold or just chilled. But he remembered hoisting himself out of the sewers, and feeling the day's heat radiate from the pavement. The air felt like something had literally sucked the warmth out of it.

"Oh, hey look at this!" Raphael's voice broke him from his reverie. "Just what we needed!" His eyes were sparkling as he held his prize out of sight.

Michelangelo turned, his teeth chattering. "A coffeepot?" he asked, all too eager to get home.

"Oh… yes… it's… another toaster!" Raph grinned as the youngest brother gave an audible groan, catching the toaster that came sailing through the air.

Leo sighed, looking up at the sky. It was getting late, and both his brothers were getting restless. Pretty soon they would have to head home, with or without their prize.

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Lexington Avenue Line: New York City: April 23rd, 1985

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"You just don't want to do it because you're a baby!" Sarah-Kay's tone was sharp and taunting, her finger pointing out at Steph like a javelin.

All four girls were crowded at the end of the empty train station, bored, listless and irritated. The night had not gone off as they'd planned; every little trick they had connived to make this concert a truly awesome party had been squelched. The bartender refused to believe Sarah-Kay's lie that they were of age, and didn't even fall for Steph's perfect smile as proof that they were 21 and just forgotten their IDs. Jo had caught up with them in the restroom, found them smoking and had proceeded to confiscate every cigarette she could find. Radiata thought she had lined up a ride with some college boys to a party afterwards, but they ditched her, leaving Jo running around the fairgrounds calling out every version of 'Rebecca' she could think of before they found her outside the convenience store a block away. By that point Steph's feet were aching from her high heeled shoes, Sarah-Kay was getting testy and Ashlee had run out of her favorite gum and had to settle for cracking open a pack of wintergreen. The whole ordeal had made them late at the train station and now they were stuck in the middle of the city with the subways closed for the night. Now Jo was off trying to decode the bus routes and find a pay phone, leaving the four teens saturated with ennui and itching to find some trouble.

Steph folded her arms across her chest with indignation. "I am not a baby. I'm just not stupid enough to go walking in the sewers just to find some ghost."

"Oooh, some ghost. I think she's calling you a liar." Radiata put in her two cents, fanning the fire.

"Oh yeah?" Sarah-Kay pushed back a spike of neon-red hair and thrust her padded bra forward. "Well guess what? I been hearin' those stories since I was a toddler. I know they're true. If you're callin' me a liar, you're also calling my entire family liars too."

Stephanie rolled her eyes a bit. "I'm not calling you a liar. I'm just saying that the old story of a immigrant girl and her brother committing suicide at this platform on the same day years apart may be creepy, but it doesn't make me want to, you know, go tromping around in dirty sewers."

Sarah-Kay pushed past her, heading for the access stairs that led away from the tracks. "So you're a baby."

"I never said that!" Steph stood there, her arms folded daintily across her chest as her two other friends flocked after their ringleader. "Guys, don't leave me alone here." She paced a bit, unwilling to believe her friends would do something as dangerous as to go wandering off in the sewers alone. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Finally when no one returned and Jo still hadn't appeared, the tawny haired girl stuffed her hands in her pockets and went running down the stairs.

She blinked at the bottom, finding it much darker than she expected, and she brought a hand up to pinch her nose. She took a few tenuous steps forward, soon finding herself completely lost in the bleak wash of black. "Guys…?" She walked forward again, digging in her pockets for her smiley-face key chain, pressing the little red button on the back.

The happy little round ball lit up with a weak glow, just enough for Steph to see directly in front of her hand. In the darkness she could hear the scraping of feet, or maybe claws upon the stone. Off in the background she could hear the rush of the rain-swelled sewers trying to flush the spring floodwaters. This time when she spoke her voice was wavering. "…Guys…?"

"What's up, baby?" Sarah-Kay's sharp voice came up so suddenly behind her that Steph shrieked and nearly jumped directly out of her hip huggers. The older girl gave a wicked laugh as she flicked on a flashlight. "You scared?"

Steph bit her bottom lip. "No, I was looking for you."

"Well ya found me. Now what?" The young wanna-be punk held her flashlight so it illuminated the bottom of her face, giving her a distinctly devilish countenance.

Steph waffled for an answer for a few moments when Radiata's voice lilted across the echoing tunnel. "Why don't you guys come here and check this out?" The two held their face off for a few more seconds before Steph broke away.

"I'm going to go see what she found," she stated, putting one hand on her hip.

"Fine." The slightly older girl stood her ground, running a hand though her neon red hair, watching as Steph wove her way past the corner and towards the light of the second flashlight. In the darkness Sarah-Kay thought she could hear whispers. Whispers and other sounds: a far off blaring of a train horn, the muffled screams of a man, and the running of an underground river. She shook her head. She didn't believe in ghosts, and she certainly didn't want her friends to think she was scared. She stuffed one hand in her pocket and walked forward; to find all three of them huddled in a group around one of the walls. "What the hell are you guys doing?"

"Check it out." Radiata looked up and grinned at her, somewhat smarmily, waiting patiently for her friend to lean over, waving her flashlight enticingly, as if they had unearthed a great treasure. Steph leaned over and strained to see as Sarah-Kay raised her hands.

"OhmyGod, ew…" Steph started, her eyes widened before Sarah-Kay struck, lightly tickling her friend's sides. Stephanie let out a sharp high-pitched wail.

The three other girls doubled over in fits of giggles, as Steph shook, fighting to control her fear and anger. "You guys brought me down here to see a dead rat…?"

"Why not? It's the best entertainment we've had all night." Sarah Kay stuck her chin out as she frowned.

"Steph's got a point, a dead rat is pretty gross." Radiata folded her arms across her chest.

Sarah Kay was not about to be bested. "You're scared too! You wouldn't even watch movies with us on Halloween. You're just a big baby!"

"Not my fault you picked stupid movies…"

Stephanie turned away from both of them as the conversation devolved into an insult flinging match, kicking the dirt beneath her shoes. Rat scratches were visible in thick oily black dirt with tiny shards of white. Almost like bone.

Her head perked to one side. Far off, in the distance she could hear the blaring of a train horn, reverberating through the sewer. She frowned, and rubbed the tops of her arms, trying to ward against the chill that came over here. "Guys…" Her voice was plaintive and stopped the two girls in the middle of their insults just before they got to the point of hair pulling.

"What, Steph?" Sarah-Kay asked with considerable irritation, turning her flashlight towards the younger girl.

"I just think we should be getting back to the platform," Stephanie replied in the best no-nonsense tone she could muster. Sarah-Kay pushed her hair back from her forehead and looked like she was about to fling the second round of insults when the same ghostly horn reverberated through the sewers again, this time much louder and closer. It had an odd, rippling sensation to it, as if it wasn't passing through the bricks, but filtering through time.

All four girls turned to each other and the argument ceased. "Let's go," Sarah-Kay ordered, taking point, nearly dragging the others after her.

At the back, Radiata shivered as they made their way back towards the steps that led up to the platform. "Is it me, or it is unusually cold out tonight?"

"It'll be warmer on the platform, come on." Stephanie pulled her raven-haired friend forward, stopping as they rounded the corner. She blinked in the darkness and Radiata raised her flashlight as a woman started walking down the steps.

"Jo!" Steph waved her arms in the air, breathing a sigh of relief. "Jo, don't get mad, we're coming back." But the figure didn't respond. In the front of the group Sarah-Kay stopped in her tracks, her eyes growing round like a cat hissing in the night.

The figure stopped, standing at the bottom of the stairs like a guardian. Steph paused and froze like a statue, slowly understanding that this was not her sister. Her breath was raspy in her throat, fogging up as it came from her mouth in tiny puffs. The woman didn't say a word, grasping one of the railings to catch her balance. She had long, dark hair that fell over a loose dress that struck Steph as something out of a black and white movie, but there was a curious sense of billowing to the skirt, which made the dress look like the figure was constantly in a perpetual state of falling, the fabric flying up in wings behind her.

"We're sorry… we didn't mean to be trespassing…" Steph started, hoping the figure might let her pass.

Instead the woman looked up, her eyes fixing on Stephanie's. For the first time the teen could really focus on the details of the figure. The woman in front of her had no neck.

No neck, no ribcage, only tiny sinews holding porcelain chunks of flesh together. She could see bones, smashed, twisted and spattered with blood sticking up from her torso, but her head seemed to be levitating on its own, connected only by the thinnest filament of silver smoke. When she opened her mouth to speak, no words came out, only a long, thin trickle of blood.

Stephanie screamed; flinging herself backwards and yelling out the only word her brain could comprehend.

Run.

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_"When streams are ripe and swelled with rain."_

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	2. May

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_"May, she will stay…"_

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Junkyard: New York City, September 8th, 2007

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Leonardo took in a very long breath, stilling himself. He had a nagging thought in the back of his mind that they should pack up and go home for over an hour now, but when Michelangelo taped a plastic bowl to bits of a broken doll, wound a scrap of decaying curtain around it for a mask and started pestering Raphael with 'Turtle Man' he was sure it was time to go.

"My hard protective hand is going to smash Turtle Man's hard protective shell if you don't get him out of my face Mikey…" Raphael's voice bore the strain of sifting through a never-ending pile of refuse only to have the prize elude him.

"But he's a super hero!" Mike grinned, his voice sounding like a cartoon voice over.

"Oh yeah, can he fly?" the red-clad turtle's smile turned from sarcastic to taunting.

The younger brother bit his lip slightly, looking at his impromptu toy. "Sure, he's got a cape."

"Oooh, can I see?" Raph sounded interested. Too interested.

"Umm, just be careful with him ok?" Mikey replied, watching his older brother suspiciously.

Raphael took the jerry-rigged doll and lightly tapped on the mask and cape before nodding his head. "Pretty solid Turtle man. Should we give him a test run?"

"Test run?" Michelangelo was just about to protest when Raphael wound up and sent Turtle Man sailing across the junkyard with a mighty pitch. "Hey! He was my turtle dude!" the younger protested.

"Well look at that, he does fly!" the red clad terrapin crowed back, a grin spread completely across his beak. He turned towards his younger brother and the tell tale silence that preceded a loud, messy, brotherly wrestling match hung in the air.

"Guys, maybe we should head home…" Leo called out a split second before Michelangelo opened his mouth.

The orange clad terrapin blinked at that for a few seconds, as if he was internally shifting gears. As soon as he had settled into his new course of thought he bit his bottom lip. "But were never found a coffeepot…" he pointed out.

Leo gave a small sigh. "We have checked everywhere, there might not be a coffeepot for us to find tonight."

"But we found toasters…" Raphael beamed as he held up his booty bag of appliances.

"Toasters don't make coffee, Raph." Michelangelo pointed out, academically.

"Look on the bright side… maybe they're having a toaster shortage somewhere like Montana, and we can make a killing off of Ebay!" He consoled, patting his older brother on the back.

"Yeah, maybe…" Leo replied, none too convinced. "I dunno, I don't think we're going to find anything else useful tonight, and I don't want to get caught."

Raphael gave a low whistle as another bank of fog rolled up from the sewers. "Yeah, with this cold coming in it looks like another big storm will follow, too."

"Don't do that" the youngest muttered a bit irritably.

"Do what?" Both older brothers asked, nearly in unison.

"You know…" He put his hands up, fixing them with clear blue eyes. "Remember Master Splinter's stories? How the guy who whistled at night called bad spirits down upon him?"

Leonardo gaped for a few seconds while Raphael hid a grin. "Mike, Master Splinter was just telling us stories," the eldest started with a tone of limitless patience.

"I know." He stuck his chin up. "But you know… never hurts to be careful, right?"

"Fearless leader is always careful." Raphael added with barely concealed mirth. "We done here?"

Mikey's shoulders slowly relaxed as he picked up his sack of goodies and fixed his brothers with a challenging grin. "If we're done, then who's up for a race to the big water pipe? Last one down into the sewer is a rotten anchovy!" He gave one last taunting chuckle before running off towards the sewers, leaving Raphael and Leonardo alone.

The red masked brother gave a small chuckle as he watched the youngest sail down into the sewers. "Come on, Leonardo. We should probably catch up to him before he gets lost." He patted his elder brother softly on the shoulder.

Leo sighed a bit, hoisting his own bag over his shoulder. "So you think Don'll be angry?"

Raphael pondered that for a second and shook his head. "Naw. I think he'll be a little irritated and we can find one next week. Now come on… you don't want to be a rotten anchovy, do you?" he grinned and coaxed Leonardo into a run as they raced back for the sewers.

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"Too slow… too slow!" Michelangelo cackled gleefully as he slid surfer-style across a slick piece of pipe and leapt down to a tunnel below.

"I'll show you too slow." His older brother growled, running along a top pipe at breakneck speed before tucking downwards and pushing off against the wall to make a headlong leap towards the concrete below. He landed, skidding to a one knee stance, balancing himself with his free hand out, salvage sack dragging along behind him before pushing up to both feet just in front of Mikey. The tails of his red bandana flapped tauntingly in the wind.

Jogging just slightly behind them, Leonardo sucked in a breath. If he had hair, it would be on end, but he didn't so he opted for a shouted warning. "You guys better be careful. With the bad weather we just had everything is slick…"

Raphael turned, flashing his older brother a grin. "Careful? We're always careful." He was about to add a wink to the expression, when he found his turn had slowed him just enough to become a younger brother roadblock. The orange clad turtle gasped for a second, trying to skid himself to a halt before sliding directly into the taller turtle, plastron to plastron. The bags of salvage went flying, sending a metallic crash echoing across the sewers.

"Whoah, dude… whoah!" Mikey's voice called from the mess as the impact sent Raph careening backwards shell first. The younger reached out to grab him, and overcompensated, sending himself spinning dizzily on ground wet enough to act as a slip n' slide. Raph hit the corner of a junction with a soft thud and an irritated groan, as the youngest brother clawed at the ground, his legs and chest slipping over the side of a dropoff.

Half a tunnel back, Leo could feel his heart skip a beat as he broke out into a full run. "Mikey? Mikey!" he screamed as he watched the orange bandana tails slide off the floor and slip off beyond the ledger following their green-skinned owner. Skidding to a halt he made a precursory check on Raphael to make sure he was in one piece before heading straight for the ledge. He could feel his breath coming in short jagged pants as he yelled, "Mikey, are you alright? Can you hear me?" not close enough to see what lay beyond the fall.

When the muddy green head popped up from the cutoff Leo yelped and leapt backwards before laying a hand over his plastron. Mike grinned, wringing mud from the tails of his bandana. "Yeah, dude, I can hear you. It's like a four foot drop. I could do without the sludge, though."

Getting to his feet and wiping grimy rainwater from his legs Raphael shook his head. "Well, chalk us up for stupid awards of the week" he chuckled lightly.

The blue clad brother shook his head, as his breath returned to a normal pace. "You guys scared the crap out of me."

The youngest gave his brother a playful face. "Aww, and I wasn't even trying."

Offering Mike a hand up, Leonardo looked from one brother to the other and back. "Are you guys alright?" he asked in a soft tone.

Raphael stretched out his arms and turned his head stretching his neck a bit. "Pretty sure I'm fine, fearless leader."

Mike looked up at Leo and rubbed his shin. "Well, I landed on something prickly, but otherwise I think I need a shower."

"You needed a shower before this happened," Raph smirked. Mike looked over and stuck his tongue out before his attention was captured by Leo again.

Biting his lip, his tiredness from the night was bringing out a tone of brotherly concern that Mike found growingly amusing. Leo looked down, "you sure you're alright? What did you land on?"

"I'm fine, Mom." The youngest replied cracking a smile before kneeling to pat the muck. "It was probably just some piece of garbage." Drawing up something solid from the mud he rubbed it with a finger. "Or… yeah, never mind…" He dropped it again like it was on fire.

"What was it?" Leo asked.

"Looks like just a chunk of wood." Raph stated, wondering why Mike's face was frozen in a wide eyed look of fear.

"I think it was more like a bone." The youngest said, hopping out of the slick mud as if it was going to bite him. "A finger bone."

Shouldering the salvage bag, hoping that the toasters were uninjured, Raphael turned towards his younger brother. "You have an overactive imagination. First whistling spirits and now finger bones in the sewers?"

Taking Leo's offer of a hand, Mike climbed up onto the walkway. "If you want to go look you can, I'd rather get out of here;" his voice had a cuttingly serious tone.

His red clad brother looked like he was seriously considering jumping down there to investigate the claim, but he lingered at the edge of the dropoff. "Sewers bring all kinds of things though here. All good turtles should be curious." He said it, but he didn't sound convinced.

"No, all good turtles need to stop racing down the sewers;" Leo reminded, exhaustion creeping through his voice.

Mike was quiet for several long seconds, before he put a hand on Raphael's shoulder to draw him back while he spoke to Leonardo. "No problem, bro. We'll ferry these toasters back safe and sound… you'll see!" He fixed Raphael with a carefully cheerful expression, "we'll just race to see who gets in the shower first."

The red clad brother shook his head, dropping his curiosity at what Michelangelo might have uncovered and slowly grinned back. "You're on…"

The eldest chuckled a little bit at that, picking up his own bag of salvage and following after them quickly, fully intending to get in a good bid at being first in line for the shower.

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Sewers: New York City, April 23rd, 1985

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It was hard to tell what was louder: her footfalls or the smack of the gum as she chewed it. It was the one thing she had to hold on to in this dark, cold, damp pit of sewers.

While the others had flashlights or key chain lights of some kind, Ashlee had never traveled with anything but some cash and several dozen packs of gum. She had never found this to be a problem… before tonight.

Step by step, she shuffled her feet, pushing them forward so they scraped on the stone was she went. It was the only way she could tell when a passage ended and she would hit dirt or water or a wall without running headlong into it.

'They should make glow in the dark gum' she thought to herself as she walked. 'If they did then I wouldn't be lost.'

From time to time she would blink in the darkness and think she saw a light or something move up ahead. But by the time she called up the courage to try to speak, it would settle back into blackness. She always ended up swallowing her words and trudging along silently.

Ashlee sighed as she turned another corner. She wondered if it was day out already, and she would never know because it was so dark down here. She wondered if the others would find their way out and forget about her. She wondered if she would run out of gum before she was found. She gave a second sigh, the smacking pausing for a second as she rolled the gum in her mouth, and that's when she heard it.

Footsteps.

Timed with her chewing, hidden by the smacks of her gum, they stopped seconds after she stopped. She could almost sense someone… or something… waiting. Ashlee swallowed again, this time finding her throat dry. Words escaped past her lips like a squeak. "Is anybody there?"

There was no answer, but it didn't make the feeling that she was being watched go away. Ash closed her eyes, and stood on the tips of her toes, turning like a ballet dancer caught in slow motion. Behind her was a great big swath of darkness. "Hello?" she asked again.

There was a pause and then a click, like a flashlight turning one, but the light that poured out into the tunnel was pale and unearthly. It illuminated a thin face, a middle-aged man with wavy dark hair and a cheap but well pressed suit. He would have been handsome if a large chunk of his temple hadn't been ripped away by a pistol, leaving his dark eyes with a deep, empty stare. Slowly his ghostly mouth curled into a smile as Ashlee's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. When his voice cut the darkness it was as thin as a whisper, and yet it seemed to echo all the way down the tunnel.

He spoke only one word: "Boo."

Ashlee jumped backwards, trying to scream, sucking in a great gust of air like a drowning person surfacing from the water. She was going to turn and run, when she felt something slide down her throat and lodge there. Her brows knit in terror as she slowly realized what it was.

She had swallowed her gum.

Giving a soft whine, she tried to breathe, clawing at her throat. Doubling over she gave short little coughs, trying to dislodge the wad, her hands alternately clawing at her neck and pawing at the sides of the subway tunnel. She even started to look around for the apparition, gesturing wildly for a pat on the back.

But he stayed where he was, watching in his semi-hazy form as her cheeks turned from red to dark purple, and finally as she toppled over, mouth open and eyes wide. She thrashed about on the ground for a few seconds until finally the light faded from her expression.

"That was almost too easy." The apparition murmured as he knelt down to touch the teen's face, pushing the eyelids shut.

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Sewers: New York City, September 8th, 2007

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A shower had never felt so good, even if Leonardo had sneakily reserved all of his racing strength for one last burst to beat them all to it. The warm water reminded him of Master Splinter's hugs when they were children and the clean feeling he had when he stepped out almost eased away the irrational worry that clung to his shell ever since he found the bone in the muck.

Almost.

Now cuddled up in bed, fending off the unseasonable chill in the air and tucked in with a flashlight and the newest issue of _Mega Zoltaire Versus Gamma Rabbit X_, Michelangelo felt a small chill of doubt chew into the back of his brain. He remembered being careful as they headed back home, focused on watching where they were going and keeping his footing, but he also remembered a strange faint smacking sound, like raindrops on a pane of glass that seemed to stay with them as they ran.

Like they were being followed.

He told himself that wasn't possible. He had checked behind his back more times than he could count, and if Leonardo, master ninja and most careful of older brothers hadn't seen or heard anything even when Mike prompted a quick check then it had to all be in his head, right?

Maybe a good night's sleep would clear his fears. Besides, he couldn't focus on how awesome Mega Zoltaire's plan to escape the clutches of the Grogon hoardes was when he kept worrying about strange noises and Master Splinter's old ghost stories. With a sigh he tucked the comic book away under his nunchuku and clicked off the light. Everything would look better in the morning.

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She waited until he had drifted off the sleep before she moved. A faint ghostly shadow melted out of the darkness until she was standing at the foot of his bed, staring at the terrapin as he fell into quiet snoring. The soft smack of gun being chewed faded into the first drops of a late night storm as Michelangelo shivered in his sleep.

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Sewers: New York City, April 23rd, 1985

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Sarah-Kay saw the exact same thing Stephanie did, and she hadn't stopped running since the word had left the younger girl's mouth. Her vision had clouded over in a white-hot panic to get away from the specter in front of her, and she had put her legs on autopilot.

Now, pausing to drag a few harsh breaths through her burning lungs, she collapsed against the side of the wall with her legs shaking against it. It took more than a minute before she could gather up enough strength to stand on her own.

Sucking in one last raspy breath, she steadied herself and ran a hand through her vibrant red hair, shining her flashlight back the way she came. No one was behind her.

Frowning, she started to walk back at a brisk pace, keeping her eyes peeled as wide as they could open to search for signs of life in the gloom. After twisting down one passage and turning down the next her breath started to come in gasping little pants. "How far did I go?" she muttered angrily to herself. If there were only a light switch this would be so much easier.

She continued onwards, trying to retrace steps she didn't remember taking in the first place, stubbornly keeping her lips shut. Ahead of her white lights flickered in the endless curtain of black sewer walls. Sarah-Kay couldn't tell if they were flashlights or train lights or ghosts.

Finally, as her feet were hurting and she was shivering despite her sweatshirt, she squinted at the lights ahead and decided to call out. "Guys… hey, guys!" she yelled, trying not to sound scared. One of the lights flickered for a moment but there was no call back. The red head sucked in a long weary breath and called again, "Guys, it's me!" Under her breath she added "this isn't funny anymore."

Slowly, one by one the lights in the distance flickered and went out. She lifted her flashlight, aiming it as far down the passageway as she could, watching as its beam started to flicker and die as well.

"Oh, come on…" her voice was shaking as she smacked the flashlight against the palm of her hand. It flickered off, and then slowly, as the batteries shifted, the light sputtered back to life. "This is so not funny." She blew a tense puff of air out through her teeth before she steadied her flashlight in front of her.

The scream that was ripped from her lungs made her throat ache, rent from the vision ahead of her. The first thing her eyes connected with was the hollow, rotting orbs of the dark haired ghost woman. Desperately Sarah-Kay blinked, trying to wipe the illusion from her eyes, but it didn't work. The ghost was not only there, but also moving closer. Its breath - if a ghost could even have breath - washed over the teenager like the rippling chill of standing in front of a chest freezer. Her own breath fogged over.

Her mind felt like a wet washcloth being wrung out, and when she came to enough sense to think, she waffled between the choices of wetting her pants or running.

Fortunately her good upbringing suggested that running was the wiser course of action. She set off again, her already aching feet hitting the stonework like jackhammers. When she twisted back to check over her shoulder she could see the crushed form directly behind her. It didn't seem to run, but in a classically ghost-like fashion it seemed to levitate, the dress flowing around the hips like a mockery of wings.

Sarah-Kay turned down a hallway, trying to evade its baleful glare. Her flashlight chattered in her hands, making a strobe-light effect on the floor. Had she been at a party she would have been amused, but at the moment it made everything seem very surreal. The stones were skipping and flashing under the shaking beam of light, finally falling off into black.

Black?

The red haired teen skidded to a halt at the end of the room, sending small pebbles skittering off into the blackness of the pit beyond. It looked like a long forgotten construction site, with some sort of drainage ditch cut into the rock. Had she been thinking clearly Sarah-Kay might have wondered how long city works left this project lay, but clear thought was all the way back up on the platform with the comfort of the lights. All she saw now was a big black pit.

Skirting the edge of the pit, she turned around. Her eyes widened, and she felt a chill pass down her throat and settle into the pit of her stomach as her gaze connected with the lifeless orbs in front of her. This time there was no edge of toughness to her voice. It had all drained away into a meek little plea.

"What do you want?"

She backed up fractionally as the ghost woman held up a smashed hand and walked towards her. She could see shards of bone peeking through the white, blood-drained flesh. "What do you want from me?" the teen implored again as tears started to drain down her face.

The ghost-woman said nothing, but she smiled. The inside of her mouth was quite different from the rest of her body. Rather than deathly white, it was warm and red, blood oozing from between jagged, pointed teeth. Sarah tried to scream but she couldn't even draw a breath, everything stuck right behind her tongue. As the ghost-woman reached out to drag her forward, a primal fear shot through the teenager's nerves. She knew what it wanted.

It wanted to _devour_ her.

She was already off balance from trying to jerk away so all it took was the faintest touch to send her toppling backwards. In fact, Sarah-Kay wasn't even sure of the ghost-woman had even touched her. She never appeared fully solid, not that it mattered. She was real enough to scare the teenager into taking that last fateful step. Her foot sank down to the ground level behind her and then as her front knee caved in, she remembered that there was no ground. For a second she felt as if her heart had leapt forward into her throat, blocking out all the air, and her arms clawed forward to grab something that wasn't there. The world spun as her body twisted inexorably backwards and wind stared to rush around her face, catching her hair. There was nothing to grab a hold of; even the ground sank away above her head.

Suddenly it dawned upon her why the ghost-woman's skirt looked like wings curled around her form.

She was falling.

It was the last thought that passed through her mind before the sickening crunch of her head hitting the bottom of the pit, and her vision faded to black.

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Sewers: New York City, September 8th, 2007

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"I am for you, Raphael…"

The teenager blinked, mumbling in the hazy darkness. "Whu-?" He felt slightly lightheaded, like he hadn't quite woken up yet.

"I said I am here for you."

Female. The voice was female… and not April. Not that April would be in his bedroom in the middle of the night unless he was dreaming. Well, he might be dreaming. He struggled to clear the sleep from his eyes and get them to focus, but his ninja-trained senses felt sluggish, almost drugged. "Who are you?" he slurred.

He could hear the shift in… her? Must have been a girl's stance. The crunch of too-tight jeans and the jangle of bracelets. "My name's Sarah-Kay, and I am here for you."

Raphael put a hand to the sides of his neck and pinched lightly in the way Donatello did when he was fending off a headache. "Why are you here for me?"

"Because I love you."

He was searching for the razor-sharp response to throw back at her, but he came up with only a weak "what?" He was only just beginning to pick out the dim outline of her form standing by his bunk, folding her arms across her chest.

"I said I love you, and I came for you, you and you alone." The response almost sounded huffy.

"That's… creepy." Raphael replied, wondering just what in the hell Michelangelo spiked that mushroom and pineapple pizza with beyond anchovies. Still, his body seemed to move in slow motion, unable to get into proper defense.

The outline of a teenage girl threw her hands up. "Creepy? Can't you see? I have watched you for years. We are perfect for one another. Our sarcasm. Our passion. Our tempers. You have a red bandana; I have red hair… perfect!"

His jaw dropped, eyes wide in the darkness. "Okay, that blows creepy out of the water and treads directly into the territory of psychotic. And that is the most superficial bunch of tripe to claim a connection with someone, or hadn't you noticed that I'm a giant talking turtle?" His words were rewarded with a blank, shocked silence at the refusal. Shaking his head and slowly drawing himself up his jaw set into a hard line. "You said you were watching us, for years? How?" His voice was dangerously low.

"Easy, we followed you." He couldn't see the smirk, but he heard it.

"Follow a ninja, for years, and remain unnoticed?" Raphael didn't even bother to hide his incredulity.

"Not so hard when you're dead;" the clipped reply came, and the outline stepped slightly forward into the thin trail of light streaming from the nightlight by the door. Her red hair was matted down with a slick sheen of blood, the left side of her head dented as if it had simply collapsed in on itself, her jacket puffed up as if she was forever falling. She reached out a pale, blood covered hand and Raphael jerked backward with a start...

And promptly slammed his head into the head of the bunk. His eyes snapped open, breaking all remnants of sleep like a sledgehammer through a glass window. Sweat poured from red-hot green skin while his heart pounded a panicked drumbeat in his ears, but this time he was sure he was awake. "Remind me to ditch this stupid bed for a hammock or something," he muttered as he slowly reigned in his senses. After a few calming moments he stared into the darkness before him, making sure it was all a dream before he gingerly rubbed the tender lump. "Stupid nightmares." He muttered lightly to himself. "This one was stupider than most."

"And what makes it stupid?" A pouting female voice came from the darkness just in front of him.

Raphael felt his usually cool blood turn to ice, but at least this time his body responded, snatching the twin sai from his bedside before he spoke. "Who the hell are you?"

A bloodied, translucent form smiled back at him from the darkness. "I came for you, Raphael."

He stabbed forward, sais cutting thin air as she clasped his wrist, and from the simple touch a feeling of cold penetrated his arm, sharper than the stab of knives and deep enough to touch his bones. He sprang to his feet with a pained cry, knocking over half the things piled on his bed stand and ready to fight. Nearby he could hear his brothers rousing awake. "I don't want you." He ground out, shielding his injured arm.

"That's too bad. You don't get a choice." The ghost smirked at him and winked, blowing him a kiss before she faded into mist.

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Nightmares were not uncommon for three young turtles asked to face enemies most people never dreamt of. Leonardo remembered the nights when they would all pile together to stave off bad dreams, but as they grew older they started to wait until one brother called for the others, or headed out of their room. Privacy and being able to stand alone were valued by the growing teens as much as brotherly support. So when he head Raphael jolt awake and mutter to himself he wasn't too concerned.

When he heard the strangled cry of pain, Leonardo had shot from his bed like a bolt. Privacy or no, he ran down the short hallway and threw open his brother's door to find Raphael slowly sinking to his knees as his sais hit the floor. He gave Leo a quiet, grateful look as his older brother caught his shoulder, stopping him mid sink.

Leonardo shivered, guiding his brother's limp form towards a crash landing on the bed. Raphael was cold.

Ice cold.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

_"Resting in my arms again."_

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	3. June

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_"June, she'll change her tune…"_

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Sewers: New York City, September 8th, 2007

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"…Ow!"

Raphael bit back further cursing, feeling Master Splinter's gaze upon him. He took a stuttering breath that would have flunked him out of meditation class and shut his eyes. No matter how bad he was at meditating, it helped cut the pain that ranged from a dull frozen throb to the searing white-hot flare wherever Donatello pressed down the warm rag. It was an agonizing process, Don slowly warming small patches of skin and then bandaging the raw areas. Slowly the layer of frost that covered his right arm faded from a pale blue haze over his dark green skin, to a deep red wound edged with a purple-black bruise.

As the painkilling ointment Donatello was liberally applying kicked in, Raphael let out a foggy breath, closed his eyes and let his tense shoulders collapse against the couch cushions. His siblings gathered around him with worried glances watching their brother succumb to bone deep shivering.

"Michelangelo, please get more blankets." Master Splinter looked to his youngest son, who scampered off to gather what he could. The old rat came around to the front of the couch and knelt beside Raphael. "Tell me, my son, what happened?"

Another failing meditative breath, Raphael cracked his eyelids open and bit his bottom lip. "I… I don't know, really."

Splinter's voice was gentle, coaxing. "Can you describe what you remember?"

Both eyes opened and Raphael fixed his father with a stubborn gaze that barely concealed his wide-eyed look of fear. "It's crazy," he tried to brush it off in a low tone.

"What's crazy?" Michelangelo bounded back with a stack of blankets almost taller than he was.

"Are you going to bury me in those?" Raph quipped back weakly.

His younger brother bobbed his head towards Splinter. "Father's orders!"

Drawing his bandaged arm closer Raphael attempted a sarcastic groan, but it dribbled out more like a whimper. He confessed that he wouldn't mind another blanket. Shrinking under the newfound heat Raphael kept carefully silent, trying to gauge how well he could avoid explaining what had happened.

His father's paw on his shoulder told him that it wasn't going to be long. "Very little seems crazy to me anymore, my son. Please describe what happened."

Raph sighed, leaning into the touch on his shoulder like a lifeline. "I… I was having this dream. This crazy dream about some girl saying she was watching us for years and I snapped at her and told her off and she got mad and came after me, except she was…" He swallowed, wondering if he was trying to wash away the fear of recalling the nightmare or the fear of having his family think he was insane. "She was already dead. And that's when I woke up, slammed my head on the headboard and I thought it was just some stupid dream…" He trailed off, unable to finish.

"Go on, my son."

Heaving in a breath Raphael dropped his voice to barely a whisper. "It wasn't. Someone was there, the same girl. Pale… like a ghost. No, not _like_ a ghost. She _was_ a ghost. I swear she was a ghost. And she came after me and I attacked her and my sais went straight through her. But when she touched me it was like ice. And then she just giggled and vanished." He took a few more panting breaths and looked to his family. "I'm nutters, right?"

Donatello rocked on his feet. "I don't know. Hitting your head can do some strange things to a person, but I don't think it can create frostbite."

"Frostbite?" The eldest brother blinked, looking back at Raphael's arm. "In September?" Don's nod of confirmation was solid.

Mike juggled the blanket pile, setting them down beside Splinter and turning to his brothers. "Maybe someone wants to make us think there's a ghost?"

"Something that can get through walls?" Leonardo mulled this over. "Master Splinter, perhaps we should check the lair, to see if anyone could have gotten in."

"Or if anyone got something in. Technology can be remotely controlled." Don added, packing his supplies away.

Master Splinter gave a short nod as he wrapped his son in additional blankets to fend off the lingering cold that clung to his skin. "Yes, Leonardo. Take Michelangelo with you as you search." He settled down in the chair beside Raphael as his sons headed off, crafting a nest of blankets over the tattered cushion. As unusual as his son's tale was, it couldn't hurt to sleep out here tonight.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Clean. Every bit of the lair was checked and there were no traps or signs of intrusion. Despite the nagging tiredness from the midnight search, Leonardo had made sure to be thorough. He found Raphael's secret stash of magazines on loan from Casey, the ragged teddy bear he used to carry around as a small child stuffed in a box in a back corner where he felt no one would ever find it, even a cache of discount firecrackers back from when Michelangelo and Raphael used to room together. But they found no signs of entry, forced or otherwise. He sighed, with an admission that they weren't going to find anything.

Michelangelo stuck to his eldest brother's side throughout the search as if he had been pasted there. Every flicker of light, every tiny squeak prompted the sleep deprived teen to spook, usually pouncing on Leo's shoulders or sliding behind him before he peered out with wide blue eyes at the VCR or a dust ball or a stray spider.

Leonardo had _had_ it.

"Mike." He started, grabbing his youngest brother's shoulders and gently pushing him down to sit on Raphael's bed. "Calm down. We don't know what's happened with Raphael yet, we're just looking to make sure we're all safe."

Michelangelo looked chagrined, his eyes casting to the floor with a faint pout. "I'm sorry." He started, sounding more exasperated than sorry, "I just…"

Leo's eyes creased with concern as he slowly sat beside his brother. "You just, what, Mike?"

"You remember in the sewers, when we were dragging the toasters back and I asked you to check and see if we were being followed?" He started, the words tumbling out in a fast stream.

A slow nod. "Yes. I figured with the tumble you took and the talk of ghost stories you were just spooked."

Mike bit his lower lip, his pale blue gaze piercing through Leonardo's fatigue. "I heard someone, Leo. Footsteps, and this weird sound like drops of water in a sink or slapping your knee with your hand or…" his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as realization hit, "gum. Chewing gum."

His theatrics earned him a heavy look of confusion from his older brother. "Mikey, I don't think ghosts chew gum."

The orange clad brother winced slightly. "All I'm saying is I heard something. But I never saw anything and you never saw anything… and Raphael never saw anything either, but something came in after him, right?"

"Raphael thinks something came after him…"

"Leo, when does Raphael, the sarcastic hothead, willingly tangle with ice? Even if it's all in his head?" Mike shot back. Leonardo paused and blinked. His younger brother had a point.

"All right, so we'll keep alert. And if you hear anything else, tell me, ok?"

Michelangelo offered a light grin, "I hear something now…"

"That's Master Splinter snoring." Leonardo gave him a faint smile back. "Which we should all be doing."

"Right." He slowly rose from the bed, watching his older brother while a furrow formed across his brow. "Leo?"

"Yeah Mike?"

"You don't think I'm crazy, do you?"

Leonardo indulged in a grin, "no more so than usual."

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Sewers: New York City, September 9th, 2007

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"How are ya feeling?" The voice was chipper. Way too chipper. Raphael stubbornly kept his eyes closed, pretending he hadn't heard. There was a muffled thump and he felt the cushions by his hip sag. Betting it was a certain brother's buttocks causing that sag he gave a faint groan. "Come on, I brought you breakfast…"

"Can I sleep in 'till lunch?" Raphael muttered, still not opening his eyes.

"It's quarter past one," a second voice called with a clinical tone.

Another groan, Raph pulled his eyelids apart, and took in a startled breath as he found Michelango looming over him with a tray full of pizza and cereal. Standing several paces away, Donatello has a bundles of bandages locked and loaded. "Oh. Hi guys. Did I miss morning training?" he asked casually. Too casually. Donatello eyed him silently as if wondering what his brother was trying to avoid thinking about.

"Master Splinter said we should leave you sleep. But we all slept in some. Even him!" Mike said cheerily, shifting blankets to make a proper nest for the tray of food.

"Great." Raphael shifted up to a sitting position, wincing as he put weight on his injured arm and finally accepting Mike's offered help. He rubbed his temples with his good hand. "Did anybody get the plate of the truck that hit me?"

"Truck? Last night you said it was a ghost." His younger brother plopped down in the chair beside him.

Raphael absorbed this for several seconds, his eyes going wide. "Ghost…" he repeated and followed it with a weak laugh. "Who believes in ghosts?" He sounded like he was trying to convince himself of something and failing miserably.

Donatello crouched down beside him, looking his brother over. "Well, you tangled with something last night. But I don't think trucks give you mild hypothermia and acute frostbite."

"It's not that cold out." Raph protested, shaking his head. He didn't want to think about last night, the lingering fear he might actually be crazy still hanging about his head like an ill omen. He decided to distract himself by nibbling on one of the slices of pizza Mike had brought, pointedly ignoring the fact that he wasn't really hungry.

"I know." Leave it to Donnie to make even the simplest deduction sound like a piece of scientific brilliance. "We're trying to see if any strange technology could have breached the lair."

"Strange technology," Raphael mulled it over. That explanation certainly sounded better than 'you're going crazy and being attacked by ghosts.' "You think so?"

Don gently pulled Raphael's injured arm to the side, changing the bandages. "I think it is a likely solution." He quieted, his fingers gently working the last of the old bandages off. The wound had swollen, raw red meeting the white areas of dead flesh ringed in dark purple. Raphael winced as the air met the damaged area. "Father took Leo to do another search of the lair, to make sure nothing will get in tonight."

Raph managed a thin nod, waiting as Donatello worked a layer of pain-killing salve over the wound and bandaged it again with a practiced hand. As the sharp pain faded into numbness, he found the words his brain had been fishing for. "I don't suppose they found anything yet?"

"Not yet." Don started cleaning up, casting a gaze back at his brother, "but they're careful."

Raphael nodded. "I suppose they are." He fell into silence, staring off towards the back halls as Donatello gave Michelangelo strict instructions to make sure Raphael ate the majority of his breakfast. The brainiac even went so far as to give Mike permission to annoy the heck out of his patient if he refused to eat, which only prompted a look of utter glee from the younger turtle. Raphael groaned inwardly, deciding they were both enjoying this too much.

So he ate, picking at his food while Mike chattered on about comics and training and the strange things you find in the bottom of cereal boxes, how he found a toad in the back hall where they kept the coats for going topside and that low confession he believed in ghosts.

Wait. What?

Raphael turned, staring at his brother with an expression that plainly said you could have knocked him over with a feather had he not already been reclining on a couch on strict doctor's order's to stay put. "You… what?"

"I believe you, Raph. About the ghosts and everything."

Oh no, there was not a tone of seriousness in his voice. There couldn't be. But oh, there was. There most certainly was. A low frightened tone that struck a chord with the gnawing pit of worry building in Raph's stomach. "I don't even believe myself…" He started.

"No, Raph. I heard something last night. After I found that fingerbone I heard something following us, but I never saw it. Leo never even saw it, even though I tried to tell him. I swear something followed us, though…" Michelanegelo's voice had tight tone of tension in it that gave the young turtle's plea a stabbing severity.

"Mike…" Raphael started as gently as he could muster, "I think we all spooked ourselves out with all the talk of ghosts and whistling and whatever you found. I don't think it was a fingerbone."

"It was!" The younger protested.

Raphael fixed him with the 'serious older brother' expression. "Mike, I admit it, I was spooked. But it's over, Master Splinter and Leo will find the problem and we'll all be fine."

Michelangelo bit his lower lip, watching Raphael's gaze for any signs of falsehood. Slowly his worry faded. "You sure?"

"I'm sure." Raphael gave a nod, finishing the last of his breakfast and nudging the tray towards his brother. "Thanks, the pizza's good." He even worked up a smile as Mike headed back towards the kitchen and he sank back into the cushions of the couch.

As soon as Mike has disappeared Raphael indulged in another inward groan. He felt sick. Sick, unsure and decidedly more spooked than before.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Sewers: New York City, April 23rd, 1985

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Where are they?" Radiata's voice escaped her lips in a soft whining tone, her flashlight cutting a morose little path through the black underground hallways. She wrapped slender fingers around the amulet and shoved her hands underneath her armpits, fending off a case of the shivers. "Why did they have to get freaked out and run?"

"Why indeed?"

Radi's breath died in the back of her throat as she froze in place. Finally, as her heart slowed back down she started to coax words from her mouth, her voice making a croaking sound. "Who are you?"

The voice had a smooth, attractive slightly foreign quality to it; a fine male tenor. "Why, my dear child… I'm a ghost."

"No you're not." The teen momentarily forgot her fear and put her hands on her hips. "You're probably just some creepy construction worker trying to scare me."

"Suit yourself," the voice chuckled back lightly.

Radiata frowned into the bleak corridor and started swinging her flashlight about. "Why can't I see you?"

"Because you're not looking in the right places." The voice came from beside her, but when she turned towards it, all she saw were shadows.

The young girl's voice was brash and impudent, hiding the fear that was returning. "That's not funny."

Again the chuckle slid through the darkness, this time behind her. "I find it rather amusing actually."

"I don't." She spun around, and this time her flashlight caught the figure before it moved. She blinked, catching only part of the features. Wearing an old fashioned suit, with wavy dark hair and a thin frame, he hardly looked like your average construction worker. She furrowed her brows, and turned to make sure there weren't more of them. When she looked back he was gone.

She pressed her lips together into a thin, firm pink line. Heat flared into her cheeks and she stamped a foot on the stone floor. "Stop that! It's not funny!"

"Sure it is." Again the voice was behind her, and as she turned, she caught the figure in her flashlight beam again. "The question isn't whether it's funny, but who it is funny for."

The teen pursed her lips, putting her free hand on her hips. "It isn't funny for me!" she whined. Sucking in a breath, she turned about again, raising the flashlight. Again, all it met was the blackness of the sewer tunnel. Radiata frowned heavily, shaking her head. "I hate this game."

She had just started to walk off, her legs shaking both from cold and fear, when the voice came back, plaintive and almost pleading. "Don't go…"

"Come on. You play with me, insult me and now you don't want me to leave. That's bull." She snapped back, flicking the flashlight around. To her surprise the man was standing there, watching her with wide eyes from the darkness. She could feel her fingers clench the flashlight a little tighter.

"Bull?" He queried lightly. "No matter. You are chosen."

Radiata screwed up her face to one side in a half snarl. "Chosen? That's just cheesy. Cheesy and stupid. I'm going home."

"You can't." He tossed the words so nonchalantly that she froze in place, swiveling halfway between looking at him and walking away. He gave a small smile as his response, stepping forward more into the light. Slowly Radi felt her jaw drop, imitating a deer in headlights as the ragged beam from the plastic torch finally illuminated the whole of his face.

The old fashioned suit was torn and ragged in the middle, soaked in blood all down the right shoulder. Powder burns still coated the lapels, all leading up to the top right side of his head where the skull had been blasted off, dried blood still draining down the preserved remnants of his ear and past an unmarred cheek. The wound itself was ringed in blood that still looked fresh and wet, but the interior was a deep black void.

"You… you're hurt…" the words straggled out of the young girl's mouth like worms coming to the surface after a rainfall.

He shook his head calmly. "I'm not hurt. I'm dead."

"You can't be." Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

He perked a thin brow at her, and gave a light ringing laugh. "I already told you child, I'm a ghost."

Radiata could feel all the warmth draining from her face, like water from a tub. "What do you want from me?"

"I don't want anything. I simply do as my sister asks." The man gave a soft smile, taking a faint step forward.

"Your sister?" The words shot out of her mouth before a realization crept in, remembering the hovering white lady frozen in death. "What does your sister want?"

"What she could never have in life. Companionship. Children."

The teen felt her blood run cold, breath coming out in steaming puffs. Slowly, behind the man's spectre she could make out a face… no, two faces. She let out a faint whimper, feeling a lump form in the back of her throat… she knew those faces.

"Sarah-Kay? Ashlee?" The faint outlines of the girls screamed and clawed at thin air, as if fighting their own deaths. Radiata sucked a mouthful of stale air into her lungs before she looked up and screamed, "what have you done with them?"

"I haven't done anything." The man replied evenly. "But she… she has made them immortal."

The young girl looked up, tears starting to well in her eyes. "Go away! Leave me alone!" she yelled, backing up. Clenching a fist around her flashlight, she tried to slam it into the ghost-man's chest, but her hand simply passed through feeling like she had tried to fight a frozen cloud.

"Why? Isn't this what you always wanted?" The man flickered and rematerialized directly by her side. His deathly pale hand brushed her cheek, with the sensation of a cold breeze across the skin. "A gothic tragedy, yours for the taking."

"I want my friends back," her lower lip was trembling.

The ghost ran an insubstantial hand across her cheek again, before willing his flesh to solidify. With an iron grip, he clasped her arm, pulling her chin to face his. "I'll do one better. I can take you to meet them." He dipped his head to hers, locking her lips in a kiss as she tried to strangle out a scream. Radiata's hands clawed against his arms, trying to find purchase to tear herself away.

Cold pushed down past her lips, and into her mouth. Sinking down into her throat, she could feel her breath freeze in her lungs. Her eyes grew wide, unable to push away as the cold stretched out into her chest. Her heart felt like it would shatter with every beat as the cold stretched into her arms and legs. Her struggles grew weak as her blood started to freeze within her veins and the cold surrounded her.

Her body hit the ground with a solid clang, crystals of ice scattering away from the corpse as the ghost who held it dissipated back into the mist.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Sewers: New York City, September 9th, 2007

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The imprints of keyboard keys against his forehead stung ever so slightly as Donatello realized he had fallen asleep at his computer. The scent of stale coffee and the sweat of training mingled with the damp moldy scent of the walls to make it a most unpleasant wake up call. Running his tongue across scummy teeth, Donatello decided what he really needed to think this through was a shower, a toothbrush, and another cup of coffee. Crap, the coffee pot was broken. He sighed and decided Master Splinter's tea would have to suffice.

"Don't go…"

He was halfway out of his chair when he heard the voice, no more than a whisper. He turned around to survey the room in the shadows of his monitor light. Nothing. Pushing it out of his mind as jumpiness after what happened to his brother, he grabbed his coffee mug and rose.

"Please don't go…"

Don's head snapped towards the monitor, he caught it, if only a glimpse. A face, the face of a young girl trapped just behind his monitor. The faint image was super-imposed over tabs of Wikipedia and medical journals on head injuries and frostbite. Don blinked and rubbed his eyes in disbelief, and the next time he looked she was gone. "Raphael has _me_ spooked now" he muttered, really wishing he could wash the nagging feeling of being watched away with some fresh coffee.

"I said don't go."

This time the voice was pointed and audible beyond the faint whisper of his imagination prompting Donatello to whirl and grip the monitor with both hands, growling at the glowing screen "who are you and what are you doing with my computer?"

Silence.

Edgy, Don looked behind his shoulders, equally relieved to see no intruders and none of his brothers there to laugh at him for yelling at his monitor as if it was out to get him. "I really need some coffee…" the words were pushed through clenched teeth as the researcher forced his muscles to relax. Tea would have to suffice; at the very least the caffeine would put his nerves to ease. Picking up the cup he dropped in his fury at the monitor phantom, he headed for the door.

"I meant don't go."

The white-rimmed form of a teenage girl with jet black hair and pale white skin that appeared permanently frozen stood in the doorway, highlighted by the monitor glow. Donatello leapt backwards, his hands flailing for his bo staff as the coffee cup shattered against the floor. A moment's regret - that was always his favorite mug - was soon pushed away by his ninjitsu-honed survival instinct as a wave of radiating cold rushed towards him. He dropped to one knee and rolled out of the way, coming cleanly up and to the side of the bossy apparition. The back end of his bo tucked into his side while the front end snapped forward, striking the ghastly white figure square in the chest.

And it moved directly through her.

Donatello ground his teeth together and leapt back, using his staff as a shield as she reached out for him. Her fingers struck the middle of the staff, a rime of frost spreading out where she touched. He could feel the unearthly cold seeping through the wood, into his fingers and he twisted the staff to one side, pushing her extended arm into her side. With a cry she released him, floating back towards the wall. Don skidded back, flicking his staff out for a second strike. Again it passed through her faint form, striking the file cabinet in the corner of the room. There was a brittle crack and Donatello stumbled to keep his balance as his hands went awry and his staff snapped in half like a bitten toothpick.

Warily eyeing the goth ghost, Don took a moment to inspect the break area. His staff had never broken on him like this, no splinters just a jagged edge like broken glass. As if the middle of the staff had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. The young girl smiled viciously at him.

Taking the defensive, the young turtle ran through his mind what that sort of cold would do to flesh and Raphael's sickening raw red wound jumped to mind. "What do you want from us?" he asked, buying some time to make it to the door.

Radiata smiled sweetly, folding her hands in front of her. "Only to love you. We have been so lonely down here all alone."

"I don't think freezing someone to death is a great definition of love." Don failed to keep the shock off his face.

"But after you die, we can spend forever together." Her voice was silky and pleading.

The purple turtle's jaw slowly loosened as he gaped at her in an expression that clearly asked 'who said I wanted to spend forever with you?' The goth girl was not to be dismissed that easily. She took a step forward, herding her chosen turtle back towards the computer and folding her arms across her chest. "We have so much in common, Dontaello. We're both teenagers, we're both stuck in the sewers. I always loved computers and pizza and I even got an A in Chemistry."

"Lots of people have that in common!" Don tossed back in an exasperated breath. "Well, except for the living in the sewers part, but a list of random co-incidences does not make people fated to spend the rest of their deaths… I mean lives together!"

"I dyed my hair purple, I am chosen for you!" she shrieked back, throwing her hands in the air in her fervor. It gave Donatello just enough time to dodge past her frozen form and dash to the door, bee-lining towards the main room.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Donatello burst into the living room holding two halves of a bo staff and an expression that would have curdled milk by looking at it. It was only Michelangelo's canny warning that prevented his older brother from tripping over his skateboard taking a header into the couch and sandwich a sleeping Raphael. And nobody likes to wake Raphael.

"What's up, bro…" Mike asked cautiously, setting down the remote and tearing himself away from late night cartoons.

"Raphael, I believe your story. I believe every word of it. I'm sorry." The words tumbled out of Don's mouth in a fast stream as he stared towards the back room. Nothing followed him. No cold breeze, no form, nothing. He slowly sunk down into a chair and gave a sigh.

Raphael blinked sleep from his eyes and drew himself up to an awkward sitting position, peering at Don curiously. "What happened? And why are you sorry?"

Shoulders still tense, Donatello looked warily about before speaking, "When I first examined you and you said you hit your head, I started looking for psychosomatic reasons – or if there was anything in your room you might have bumped."

"You _did_ think it was all in my head!"

Don cut the protest off with a raised hand. "But I couldn't find any cases of spontaneous frostbite. So I started just research frostbite, and while I did I heard this voice…"

"Gum chewing?" Mike squeaked.

"No, just female. This strange teenage girl professed her love and tried to freeze me to death." Donatello gauged his brothers reactions in an almost clinical manner, watching as two pairs of shocked eyes fixed on him. They were rattled. He sighed and started again, "I'm not convinced about ghosts. I still think it's more likely that our enemies have found some way to create a ghost-like projection with a weapon that uses super-cooled gases. But I am convinced it is real and dangerous."

Raphael rolled his eyes. "Well that makes me feel better."

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

As thunder rolled across the city, Michelangelo tried to blot the worry from his mind. With Donatello's confirmation the brothers had gone back into full paranoia mode, despite not finding a trace of the intruder beyond Don's shattered staff.

Raphael had been quick to note that they, by and large, left stories of ghosts and boogeymen behind when they were eight. Mike had stifled a giggle listening to his older brother's 'tough' voice, more so when Donatello recommended Raphael head back to his room and the red clad turtle protested on grounds of his injury. They had both nodded to one another, that unspoken agreement: all three of them were spooked, even if nobody wanted to admit it.

It left them restlessly bunked out in the living room. Donatello was lightly snoring amidst a pile of research, Raphael on the couch, Leonardo off speaking in quiet tones with Master Splinter in the kitchen. Michelangelo listlessly flicked to another channel, the television tuned just loud enough to drown out the hammering of raindrops on the streets above but low enough to hear if anyone was coming. He didn't actually care what was on anymore, the simple flashes of color and light were as comforting as an old blanket.

Slowly he started to drift off, lulled to sleep by exhaustion and the gentle rhythm of his brother's snoring when his head snapped up. Was that gum snapping? Did he hear it again?

"It's only the rain." He murmured to himself, checking behind his shoulders once again, comforted to only see the silhouettes of his father and brother in the kitchen and the gently sounds of their late night talk. "Only the rain."

As he drifted off to sleep the pale ghost peered out from the shadows, the soft smack of gum fading into the sounds of the night.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

_"In restless walks she'll prowl the night."_

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx


End file.
